The environment of the present invention is generally a lid lifter, and more specifically a lifter for a lid of a storage area of an article handler. In one embodiment the environment may be a refrigerated vending machine of the type, for example, as described in issued U.S. Pat. No. 5,240,139 entitled Package Vending Machine, issued on Aug. 31, 1993 to Munroe Chimomas. This type of vending machine includes a cabinet having the conventional equipment associated therewith needed for accomplishing vending, such as a user article selection and payment system, an article storage area and an article dispensing mechanism. In the forenoted U.S. patent, the article storage area advantageously comprises a conventional chest freezer mounted in the vending machine cabinet to form the refrigerated, and in fact frozen, storage area. In order to efficiently maintain the articles in the refrigerated condition, the chest freezer has a thermal barrier, i.e., a lid over the top-opening used by the article dispensing mechanism to retrieve and dispense the articles stored therein. Various types of thermal barriers are possible, one such barrier comprising a one-piece door hinged for arcuate opening/closing movement over the top-opening of the freezer.
It is desired that the opening/closing movement of the lid be accomplished by a mechanism which will:    Reliably and securely raise the lid to its fully open position, and not beyond that position,    Reliably and securely hold the lid at its fully open position,    Reliably and securely pull the lid towards the closed position after it has been put into a fully open position,    Reliably and securely position the lid to the fully closed position upon completion of a dispensing operation.    Reliably and fully disengage from the lid when not in use so as to not interfere with manual operation of the lid, which manual operation may be desired during reloading or servicing of the machine, or in the event of a power failure.